Counter Passage

We were reading Phillis Wheatley again, and found her writing about the sea again. One time for your mind, one time:

I sing not now of gree embow'ring woods

I sing not now the daughters of the floods,

I sing not of the storms o'er the oceans driv'n

and how they howl'd along the wastes of heav'n,

But I to R--- would paint the British shore,

And vast Atlantic, not untry'd before:

Thy life impair'd commands the to arise,

Leave these bleak regions and inclement skies,

Where chilling winds return the winter past,

And nature shudders at the furious blast.

O thou stupendous, earth-enclosing main

Exert thy wonders to the world again!

If ere they pow'r prolong's the fleeting breath,

Turn's back the shafts, and mock'd the gates of death,

If ere thine air dispense'd an healing pow'r,

Or snatch'd the victim from the fatal hour,

This equal case demands thine equal care,

And equal wonders may this patient shine.

But unavailing, frantic is this dream

to hope thine aid without the aid of him

Who gave thee birth, and taught thee where to flow,

And in thy waves his various blessings flow.

1.) Prayer -- appeal to higher power -- is one of her dominant forms. We need to recall that a prayer is a conjuring, an effort to bring power present to alter the future.

2.) This prayer is to the one god, but through one of the many gods, the ancient and "earth enclosing main." She asks the throughway's benevolence through a familiar ("not untry'd before" -- we need to hold that phrase of always alreadiness in our hands like a smooth stone, to steady "frantic dreams" that recall our own terrible passages) passage that cannot be made "without the aid of him."

3.) The sea, a master trope in her vocab, has the power to be benevolent or cruel, and to protect or harm when mortals make their passage.

Every time we read Phillis Wheatley, we are reminded of her brilliant syncretism, and how useless it is to make hate the narrative force in the tradition that makes less of her work. We should begin reading her powerful prayers for safe passage to the east, and make that a figure in out thinking, too. She's the creole who, like the London calypsonians of the 40s and 50s, was strong enough to become native again elsewhere.

:: pours a little liquor on the ground ::

This is the ancient manifested hip hop, straight off the block.

Represent, y'all.

To the beat y'all.

What We're Hearing

It is easy enough to throw the image of Josephine Baker around. We think the difficulty is to make something of the music. This is not because the music offers less than others do -- it is not aesthetically deficient. Not at all. It is so surfeit one overimagines. We think it might turn out to be a story as simple as Phillis Wheatley's, or for that matter Richard Wright's and Dexter Gordon's: travel against the sun for opportunity.

Just Biting

We were seeking someone else's wisdom to guide us this morning, and though we found it, we also found teacake stories hiding in the cut. We resist the temptation to hate, one way or the other because teacake stories are always full of unresolvable grievances, and offer this found wisdom instead:

Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs?

Where is your tribal memory? Sirs,

in that grey vault. The Sea. The Sea

has locked them up. The Sea is history.

Mainly in triplets, the St. Lucy poet then tells a story that echoes much of our recent thinking on the powerful figure of the ocean that has transported us recently. We find the figure in the voices of many thousands gone, from Phillis Wheatley to Langston Hughes, the saints who help us find our way on this long road.

Then came the white sisters clapping

to the waves progress,

and that was Emancipation --

jubilation, O jubilation --

vanishing swiftly

as the sea's lace dries in the sun,

but that was not history,

that was only faith,

and then each rock broke into its own nation;

From there he patiently builds a counterstory to the poem's three page narrative just concluded:

then came the synod of flies,

then came the secretarial heron,

then came the bullfrog bellowing for a vote,

fireflies with bright ideas

and bats like jetting ambassadors

and the mantis, like khaki police,

and the furred caterpillars of judges

examining each case closely,

and the dark ears of ferns

and in the salt chuckle of rocks

with their sea pools, there was the sound

like a rumor without any echo

of History, really beginning.

We're not sure what to make of the not resolve at the end, but we take it for the not resolve that it is. In the meantime (which is the period that matters), we find ourselves attracted to the way Walcott has animated the natural world -- in the fashion of the griot -- with human characteristics. Let's leave it at that and come back to it. Wind that back.

And Then, As It Crosses the Ocean...

We find new power in the figure of the sun -- from Phillis Wheatley to Jessie Fauset, to lucky ol' man that Stevie Wonder wants to blame in his exquisite unhappiness.

Current Reading